How what? Meaning, give us some information, on what system do you want to play it. On real Dos, or...?

Anyway, you just need to copy the game folders to hard drive, then MAKE sure none of the files or folders is read only. Then run install.exe in the game folders (ultima7 and serpent, if I remember correctly) to set the games up.

Also consider using Exult (http://exult.sf.net) if you are running a modern system.

The game's full directory tree is set as full access for my account.

The Exult team has put any further (new) releases on hold until they can track down several bugs - some game-breaking, some not-so-bad but still serious. This anouncement was made almost a year ago, and can be seen on their main page.

DOSBox vanilla 0.74 in Win8.1

I wrote that Exult announcement, the snapshots of Exult are good now. There has been a new announcement recently...

So, this belongs in the Dosbox forums, please use those when you have Dosbox problems. I'll move it.

So permissions are good but what about the file attributes? Please check those for files and folders. Tell us your mountings in dosbox. Run install.exe in the game folders IN dosbox.

Same on 'file attributes': all have full access allowed for my account.

Quote: Run install.exe in the game folders IN dosbox.

#mount e C:\Users\U7\SETUP\ -t cdrom -label U7

#e

mount c C:\Users

c:

ch U7

ch ULTIMA7

#INSTALL.EXE

ULTIMA7.COM

#exit

As you can see, I created a SETUP folder and copied the CD contents there, then ran the installer from that folder - thus avoiding the 'virtual 8086 mode' error. I can comment and #uncomment variables as needed. So the installer thinks it's running properly with either method.

Please start anew. nuke the contents of C:\Users\U7\ folder.
In Explorer drag and drop the two game folders into c:\u7.
Now check the file attributes - attributes, not permissions - that the folders and files are NOT write protected.

Then start Dosbox and use the following commands:

1mount c c:\user\u7\
2cycles=11000
3ems=false
4xms=true
5c:
6cd ultima7
7install

Setup the music and sfx and then play via ultima7.com. Same for Serpent Isle using folder serpent and serpent.com to play the game.

(cycles fixed to 11000 because BG will otherwise run much too fast in Dosbox, ems needs to be disabled in Dosbox and xms *can* be enabled for the games to work, with a setting like this you don't need to mess with the dosbox.conf file)

Also you need this fix for U7 in Dosbox by ripsaw: Ultima VII Earthquake effect (screen shaking)

The initial setup works simply by changing the directories the game resides in.
I doscovered (sic) this by loading a Linux liveCD (I thought Windoze was interfering in some hidden fashion). I installed DOSBox and called the physical U7 CD, and ran the installer from there. No errors, no complaints there. Unfortunately, SliTaz has an Alsa bug (long story short, sound doesn't work). So I moved the new install directories to Windows C:\Users (I don't like installing anything to the C:\ root, Windoze wants to render anything put there as read-only. If a DOS game wants to be installed there, DB lets you get around this, it's just having the installer see any directory as C:\).
So I ran the game from the new locale - runs great. I copied the game to its old spot - no go. So I moved the game folder up in the folder hierarchy until it ran.
Apparently DOS doesn't like having files it needs to read nested too deep. I omitted a couple of chdir variables from the CONF listing because I didn't think the location of the game folder was the cause of the problem.
I got around this by instead of mounting C:\Users then changing directories to the game folder, I mounted my DOS games folder - then navigated to the game folder. Thus I omitted a few needless chdir variables.
At least the 'no sound/music' problem hasn't come up again, but on the upside I found probable cause due to user error.

You over complicated it waaaaaaay too much 😉